Life & Wisdom Quote by Stanley Schmidt

Science fiction, in Stanley Schmidt's framing, isn't a predictive engine so much as a moral simulator. The power he points to is range: SF doesn't just sketch one tomorrow, it lays out a spectrum of tomorrows that widen our sense of what is politically, technologically, and socially thinkable. That's the sly ambition here. By talking about "possible futures" rather than "the future", Schmidt rejects the fortune-teller posture that outsiders often mock. He recasts the genre as a tool for agency: a medium that makes consequences legible and choices dramatic.

The line is also a quiet argument about responsibility. "Realize the good ones" implies futures are built, not awaited; "avoid the nasty ones" suggests catastrophe isn't fate, it's a failure of imagination, planning, or ethics. The subtext is almost civic: SF trains readers to run "what if" scenarios the way policy people run models, but with the emotional voltage of story. It can make a surveillance state feel claustrophobic before the cameras go up, or make climate adaptation feel concrete before it's a line item.

Schmidt, long associated with the editorial and gatekeeping side of the field, is also defending SF's cultural legitimacy. This isn't escapism; it's rehearsal. The quote works because it assigns SF a pragmatic job without stripping it of wonder: it keeps the genre's sense of possibility while insisting that possibility comes with a steering wheel.